Recent content by JBCrowson

Dickens and Shakespeare were both fond of inventing new words, to the extent I wonder if the colloquialism "what the Dickens..." reflects how often he threw new words at his readers.

Yup, reckon we crossed the demilitarised zone about 10 posts earlier.

I really wanted to pick up on the phrase in parentheses here. First, involuntary suicide is murder. Second, Canada is one of those countries that doesn't have a death penalty, so Canada is not killing any people intentionally, for profit or otherwise. Third, while of course there are individuals...

The recipe is very explicit, we can't substitute marshmallows for the spider eggs.

I think I would echo a little what others have said: read or watch what you find funny and try to analyse why you find it funny. I would also watch and analyse material which is considered funny by a wide audience - if you want wider appeal, you need to know your market. Combine the results of...

I used omniscient 3rd for my book. I like the freedom/ability it gives me to do stuff like this... One of the characters is a god posing as a mortal. There are only 2 scenes from the god's point of view. The first begins with a short description of dawn breaking, going from the sun rising, to...

In my WIP, I have a few. Some more obvious (Seren de Pertiss is the high priest of the god Luck) than others (Lydia Moda is leader is leader of the Frygian bards). Neither is an important character, only appearing in chapter heading quotes (up to the end of book 3).

One of the dumbest UK government ministers of recent times had Cleverly as his family name.

Be assured that regardless of the flag on the bag, Americans and Canadians are usually readily separated, even before they speak. (DOI Brit living in Canada).

Malik, thank you for your passion and for taking the time to share it with us. MUCH appreciated.

Footnotes? more like foothills, en route to climbing Everest! With that annoying habit hills have of making you think you've reached the summit, only to find there's a whole lot further to go. Overall, I would say Norrell and Strange isn't worth the time investment.

Been reading Steven Norrel and Mr. Strange. It reads, at sentence level, like a nineteenth century author such as Austen, with language most would consider flowery today. The pacing is slower than an ox cart though, with many chapters before the story proper actually begins.

For me there has been a back and forth between story and world: I had an original idea for a story, which necessarily included some world building (there were gods and magic). Clarifying some important details about the extent and limits on both gods' power and magic, influenced the story. The...

Welcome, and well done ditching the AI. If you post things in the critique requests area, people will usually read and offer thoughts. For anything you might want to publish someday that is best as it has different visibility way from this site, and doesn't count as publishing a piece of work...

I agree with those who've said it could work, depending on your skill as a writer. What I would add is that the more unusual your structure / POV, the harder it is to pull it off. I believe this is because when we write, we draw on everything we've read to some degree, and so we have more...